On the walking the city theme. I am reminded of an old article, Man’s Movement and His City by C. A. Doxiadis, the only thing from which I remember is the cool Venn diagram. You should look that up. There are quarters of Old City Lahore that are accessible only on foot. I am sure Delhi likewise. But the key here, which you express nicely, is the human architecture that one encounters outside of those steel-and-glass coffins. A city, after all, is made up of its inhabitants.

Of course: You can start with the History of Walking:)

Actually in some places here walking is outright dangerous - one will be road-kill. Bill Bryson, that bumbling comic, in his book “A Walk In The Woods” actually sketches one such hazardous walking expedition of his, when he gets off the Applachian Trail (a 2200 mile long wilderness path along Eastern United States) to spend a weekend in a town. He concludes that it is much better to deal with black bears in the woods than irate car drivers on the streets of Americana.

However New York (and perhaps Chicago) would be a notable exception. And I really enjoyed walking around that city when I was there a few weeks ago.

Also I noticed a most interesting thing this morning when I was doing my round of weekly book reviews, over at NYT’s Book Page: a literary map of Manhattan. Do you think something similar can be done with Delhi?

Best.
Sashi

(Not quite all) kidding aside, I actually do agree that perambulation in ‘the field’ enriches both the practice of ethnography and the situating of historical research in the ethnographic present. And Sarai’s Cybermohalla Project (as well as some things going on in other post-institutional research centers in Bangalore, Calutta, Bombay, Karachi and no doubt elsewhere) certainly demonstrates the extent to which all urban dwellers engage in very complex and articulate ways with the politics and possibilities of space and place in the city. I am not sure, though, if this relationship does more to empower students/informants or professional academic researchers. Just as access to various institutions, resources and whole terrains of any given city is regulated by (usually class-defined) systems of exclusions, I think one could also say the same about knowledge and the capacity to represent the city as an object of inquiry. In a curious inversion, almost anyone can walk the walk, but few are able to talk the talk (or at least do so in a way that will hold any authority in the public sphere).

On another note entirely, I want to weigh in on Sashi’s fine anecdote of the automobilization of American cities. This is certainly a trend that has been developing for my and my parents’ whole lifetimes, and one to which I have given much thought. A most sensitive and thoughtful discussion can be found in Marshall Berman’s description of Robert Moses driving a ‘meat-axe’ through the living heart of a borough in order to construct the Cross Bronx Expressway (see the last section of All that is Solid Melts into Air).

Automobilization and the elimination of pedestrian infrastructure is very much the case with many Indian cities as well, and Delhi is certainly no exception. I think much of the power of Bulleyah’s embedded tale in this post comes from what would be seen as the sheer perversity of someone from an educated middle class choosing to walk great distances through what is still overwhelmingly a city moved by petrol (though I think a similar democratizing power resides in public transportation, but this might be a topic for another post).

US cities, and particularly the southern ones like Sashi’s Atlanta and my Miami, are certainly beyond Delhi in terms of the percentage of people who get around in their own automobiles almost exclusively. There are exceptions, however. Just as there are sections (increasingly few, no doubt) of cities such as Delhi and Lahore where one can only move by the workings of their own two, there are also parts of every US city I know of where people be walking and biking around - whether because of the culture of the ‘hood, their own personal preferences or economic straits. These are frequently parts of town that people from the educated classes avoid as if their lives depended on it, but merely walking around in such areas (a seditious act, I know) and having ‘ordinary conversations’ can reveal the same kind of histories that this post does an excellent job of gesturing towards.

I have much more to say on this (including, perhaps, an anecdote from the ATL) and I plan to cook up a post of my own on the theme soon. For now, however, I just wanted to make the point that the extinction of pedestrian culture is a global phenomenon touching both the US and India that legions of architects are trying mostly unsuccessfully to undo. The seditious and increasingly risky creative act of simply walking around both voices a subtle protest against this development and brings you onto the level with numerous urbanites excluded from the lofty heights of the flyover. US cities from LA to Houston to Orlando may have done a far better job of creating urban spaces accessible only to vehicles, but Hyderabad and Mumbai don’t even have cross walks at many of their major intersections. Walk on!